CROSSES, GIFTS MARK TRAGEDIES

It still is there, easily visible over the trash bin and bales of corrugated cardboard behind K mart.

The white cross rises about 12 feet. Beneath it rests a foot-high Jesus statue, a smiley-face pillow, potted plants and stuffed bunnies carefully wrapped in plastic to protect them from the elements. There is no name, only the words "Love Lives Here."

No, it doesn't.

There was no love involved the night John Zile bought a shovel, dug a hole fit for a child and threw dirt over the lifeless face of Christina Holt, 7.

Her body was pulled from that hideous grave in Tequesta more than two years ago, and still a monument stands, still people come to drop off gifts on holidays.

Will the shrine be there forever? And will people continue to mark their tragedies until the South Florida landscape is only a constant reminder of sickness, devastating mistakes and senseless killings?

Basic crosses are common in many countries, said Henry Petraki, professor of anthropology at Palm Beach Community College. "But America is taking an age-old ritual and putting their own spin on it, adding all the toppings," he said. "It's not unlike what they've done to pizza. We're making shrines quicker and more extravagant."

They are impromptu memorials - the public's immediate reaction to tragedy. Some are spontaneous, some are raised methodically, such as the Interstate 95 crosses that the state fears will turn highways into a national cemetery. Some blow away in a few weeks, others take on a permanence.

"It's gotten to the point today where the value behind the message has become irrelevant. People just create the shrines for a quick sense of relief," said Petraki, who has studied roadside memorials. "The gesture may be honorable but, my goodness, why would you memorialize someone by a Dumpster or where they were shot?"

Along Palmetto Park Road, the five crosses stabbed into the ground after five Boca Raton teens were killed still stand, more than a year after the tragic car wreck.

At Conniston Middle School in West Palm Beach, the words "Rest In Peace" are painted on the sidewalk where seventh-grader Johnpierre Kamel was slain for a $350 watch. Will the words ever go away?

Immediately after the battered body of 4-year-old Kendia Lockhart was discovered in a shallow grave near I-95 in north Dade County last month, dozens of people descended upon the site with flowers and stuffed animals, erecting a shrine like a community barn-raising.

"It seems bizarre to put them at a spot where a child was disgraced," said Sandra Cahill, a mother and political activist from Pompano Beach. "Maybe it eases people's guilt for the moment, but throwing flowers and teddy bears at the problem doesn't really help."

When the public could not reach the crash site of Valujet Flight 592, helicopters flew overhead to allow people to drop wreaths into the gaping hole in the Everglades. The state is planning a permanent tribute on Tamiami Trail.

"It will be a platform or monument to honor those who died," said Maj. Jim Ries of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.

But what honor is there in being the victim of incompetence?

Fort Lauderdale is dedicating a small beachside park to those people who were gunned down by disgruntled co-worker Clifton McCree in February 1996.

Nationally, the government building in Oklahoma City has been leveled and a permanent monument erected. But would the victims really have wanted their lives memorialized where some maniac bombed their work place with a U-Haul truck full of fertilizer?

There always will be two perspectives to these questions, just as there are with the smaller shrines and crosses.

Sally LeBauer of Delray Beach still shudders when she goes past the location on Congress Avenue where her son was killed in an automobile accident a year ago. She would never want the spot marked.

"Why memorialize a place of tragedy?" she asked. "It's better to remember our loved ones in celebration of their lives, not in their mangled deaths."

But Betty Downing, who lost her only son in a hit-and-run accident in June, has taken solace in the simple cross on Gateway Boulevard in Boynton Beach. Living nearby, she passes it almost every day. And when she sees that someone has left flowers or a heart for Valentine's Day, it reaffirms for her that people haven't forgotten her son.

"I don't see it being there forever," Downing said. "But for right now, today, it is serving a purpose in helping us heal."

Since the early 1980s, the founders of the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers chapter in Palm Beach County perpetuated the growth of roadside crosses by offering them to the families of drunken-driving victims. When people saw the memorials, they gave a significant message: Stop drinking and driving. But, through time, that message has been diluted since the crosses now are so numerous and represent deaths caused by everything from out-of-control semitrailers to speeding compact cars illegally crammed with passengers.

Shrines also have no boundaries. When two young girls were found deadlast year in Steven Ault's attic in Fort Lauderdale, the public came out in droves to place flowers and purge themselves.

"I'm not for the death penalty," Julia Arana of Plantation said at the time. "But if I had the chance, I'd fry him myself."

At Christina Holt's K mart grave, Kathleen Monaco of Palm Beach Gardens said, "The anger I feel and so many people feel, we want to rip these people apart."

"You can understand people's immediate anguish. But why don't we stop and say, 'Maybe instead of adding another stuffed animal to a shrine it would be better if I made a donation to Kids in Distress or something,'" Cahill said.

This week, the public scurried to mark the spot where the five teens missing since 1979 were entombed in a submerged van for about 18 years. Publix bouquets now sit among rusted pipes, Budweiser cans and cigarette butts on the grassy banks off Boca Rio Road.